


Concerto

by valancy_joy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-30
Updated: 2011-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valancy_joy/pseuds/valancy_joy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Author’s note:</b> This little thing sprung up from a bunny I was given on Twitter one night. I think it may have evolved from the original prompt. But here it finally is. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the music Sherlock is playing is Shostakovich’s Concerto Number 1 in A minor for Violin, Opus 99.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Concerto

**Author's Note:**

> **Author’s note:** This little thing sprung up from a bunny I was given on Twitter one night. I think it may have evolved from the original prompt. But here it finally is. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the music Sherlock is playing is Shostakovich’s Concerto Number 1 in A minor for Violin, Opus 99.

_“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.” - Salvador Dali_

His first summer away from home, Sherlock was six. He was sent to Sussex to his Grandmother’s estate. His parents had kept Mycroft with them on their trip to the continent. Even at ten years old, Mycroft was already impressing people. Sherlock, on the other hand, well, any way you looked at it, he was better off in the country.

Grandmother wondered to herself if Sherlock was lonely here in her not-so-big, but not-really-all-that-small-either house of hers, so she always went up and tucked him in bed at night, even though it was really Nanny’s job.

“Granny, have you ever et a worm?” he asked her one night not long after he arrived.

“Eaten, Sherlock,” she’d admonished, looking down at a very small boy in a very large bed.

“Have you? I need to know!” he’d said with an impatient wriggle.

His grandmother had pulled the covers up around his ears and smiled down at her inquisitive grandson.

“Never a worm,” she’d said, with a fond scandalous tone as she’d kissed his forehead and snapped off the bedside light.

Sherlock had sighed unhappily, his fingers finding the torch he had hidden underneath the covers. There was a book under his pillow and Sherlock was just waiting for Granny to leave so he could get back to finding out more about the worms he’d spent the day grubbing out from beneath stones in the rockery.

As his grandmother got to the door of his bedroom, she turned, the hall light throwing a stripe of warm yellow light on the bed.

“Pity about those worms,” she’d said watching Sherlock watching her.

“But once, on a trip to Africa, I ate a queen termite, plump as a potato, roasted over the camp fire on a stick.”

When Sherlock woke the following morning, his supposed-to-be-under-his-pillow book was lying partially tucked inside a rucksack on the padded bench at the foot of his bed. Next to it were a worn pith helmet, and an old butterfly net.

When Nanny arrived with his breakfast tray, he hopped back in bed.

“I’ll want my wellies, Nanny,” he announced as he spooned honey onto his oatmeal.

Nanny just laughed.

“But I’ll need them Nanny. I am going to have adventures today!”

 _“Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.” -- George Orwell_

The summer Sherlock was eight, his Granny was still coming to his room at bedtime to check on him. One night she found him sitting cross-legged on his bed, crying. Or rather, trying not to, in the way of eight-year old boys.

“What is it Sherlock?” she’d asked, sitting down next to him on the bed.

“Is my brain gone wrong, Granny?” he’d asked, scrubbing the tears away forcefully with the back of his hand.

“Why would you think that?”

“I asked the Vicar’s wife, didn’t she ever want to dig up those people in the churchyard to see what their bodies looked like after being in the ground for so long, and she said, “What goes on in that cracked brain of yours boy?” His imitation of the Vicars wife’s soft Welsh vowels was rather uncanny, and his Grandmother tried not to smile.

“So I wondered,” Sherlock continued, “is my brain wrong?”

“Your brain is the best part of you Sherlock Holmes, and don’t you ever forget it,” his Granny had said pulling back to covers and shooing him under them.

She’d kissed him good night, and was leaving the darkened room when he sat up in bed and asked, “Isn’t anyone curious what very dead people look like?”

“Dead people have no stories to tell. There’s no point in digging them up,” she’d told him.

“Granny’s wrong,” Sherlock thought to himself as he curled up under the covers with his trusty torch and a book on archaeology.

 _“You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way.” -- Johnny Cash_

“Sherlock, come inside. It’s cold out here.”

Sherlock ignored his brother, prompting Mycroft to close the door and step out onto the terrace.

“Granny’s looking for you,” Mycroft said, knowing full well how little an incentive that was when Sherlock was like this.

But the music is lovely, and Sherlock may only be twelve, but he’s had a violin in his hands for years now. Never one this nice, though. Not until now.

So Mycroft stands on the terrace, breathing on hands chilled by the crisp December air. He wonders how Sherlock’s fingers are so nimble. For he has been standing out here in the dark, looking up at the stars and playing Shostakovich for simply ages.

After a few minutes, when Mycroft’s toes start to tingle with the cold, he gives up and turns back to the house. He pauses when he get to the door, turns back and says with venomous undertones, “I’d have expected you to at least remember that the cold is bad for that violin.”

There is a huff from Sherlock that wreaths a cloud of mist around his head, and the violin which gleams warmly in the glow of the lamps through the windows, is tucked possessively under Sherlock’s chin. Cheerful, lovely notes ripple out suddenly from the boy and his violin, and Mycroft knows what Sherlock is not saying.

 _“We’re getting acquainted. Now go away.”_

Mycroft shrugs. There is mulled wine, and tea cakes, and little mince pies inside, all of which sound much more enticing than freezing himself on the flagstones watching his little brother pour his heart out through his fingertips.

So Mycroft goes inside. His Grandmother is standing nearby, looking past him, staring out at Sherlock.

“Hullo, Granny,” he’d said as he subtly stamped his feet trying to restore the circulation in them.

“He isn’t coming in,” she had said, and they both recognized the ‘not-really-a-question’ tone in her voice.

Mycroft shrugged once again, and slipped away to a warm corner between the drawing room fireplace and the buffet table.

Grandmother Holmes, meanwhile, stays where she is, a fine Irish wool shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders, watching Sherlock as he stands in the frosty moonlight, switching movements, and filling the air with the Burlesca.

She smiles in satisfaction over her choice of a Christmas gift.

 _The Master said, “At age fifteen I set my heart upon learning...”— Confucius_

“Sherlock, are you coming down to dinner?”

There was no answer from the cluttered room.

“Sherlock!”

“Not hungry. Go ‘way.”

“What are you working on?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

Sherlock ran his fingers through his already untidy hair and flopped down on the worn leather armchair in the corner of his room.

“You’re on holiday, my boy. Do you really have to do this now?”

“This is important. I said you wouldn’t understand.”

“When I was fifteen, I spent my holidays on horseback.”

There was a scoffing noise from the depths of the armchair.

Sherlock watched as his grandmother wandered further into the room, eyeing the papers, maps, photos and notes taped to the overmantle and the bookshelves that flanked the fireplace. After a few moments she stepped closer, tipped her head to one side, and then tapped one of the sheets of paper.

“You’ve missed a step here,” she said.

Sherlock was suddenly at her side.

“Oh, yes, I see. There’s a gap in the timeline...” muttered Sherlock, digging through the pile of papers on the hearth.

“Also, there are several other poisons that can have this same effect. I think there’s a book in the library. If I send it up along with a dinner tray, will you eat something?”

Sherlock was making notes, and taping more things up amongst the mass of papers. But he paused for just a moment, looked back, and smiled.


End file.
